Memories Awakened
by kivawolfspeaker
Summary: Discountinued due to writer's block, sorry. Please R& R! The FBI's Fringe Department comes across one of Sanctuary's Tesla's "Sleeper" vampires and as a result Nikola has to be Walter's lab rat!
1. Meeting Count Dracula

1

**Memories Awakened**

By Jen Wilcher

~A Sanctuary/Fringe Story~

**Chapter 1: Meeting Count Dracula**

A brown-haired, blue-eyed man, in his thirties, picked up a beaker full of a strange liquid. Its smell seemed to be fading, but the sweet and rotten aroma still lingered The man wore a blue sweater and jeans with black casual dress shoes. The breaker sat on one of the many glass topped tables in his father's old Harvard University laboratory. He rolled his eyes. _Great. Walter's brewing more homemade drugs. What could it be this time?_ he wondered. His father, Walter Bishop, had recently been released from a mental hospital; St. Clair's where he spent seventeen years and much of his son's childhood.

Walter, as if on que, walked down the stairs and to the main floor of his old laboratory sipping a fruit drink. "Peter don't touch that! It's for an important experiment," he lectured.

"And what experiment was so important you had to leave the lab to get a fruit smoothie?" his son asked.

"I was craving a strawberry banana smoothie," Walter replied. He took off his tan coat and placed it on one of the lab tables near by. He dressed much like his son, a sweater and with tan slacks and casual dress shoes. "I'm trying to make some ayahuasca. I've recently read that some South American shamans use it to elicit an alternated state of consciousness."

"So just in case you get bored with LSD, you've decided to try other methods of getting high?" Peter retorted, annoyed.

"No, I merely wish to see if the drug has the same effect."

Peter's annoyed state didn't stop him from noticing a distraught looking young man come through the oak & glass doors and down the stairs to the main floor of the lab. The young man's eyes looked downward with thick brown bangs covering them and his striped flannel shirt and blue jeans tattered and torn. "Are you lost?"

"Help, me . . . I think, I think. I might be. Some kind of freak, or something," he struggled to get out. "I, I should have. Died in that lab explosion, but somehow, I didn't."

_Another freak to help, _Peter thought. Ever since Peter had been playing legal guardian to his father because the Federal Bureau of Investigation needed his help with certain cases, it had been one weird person or thing after another."Well, you may have come to the right place. We're kind of partial to freaks in this lab."

Upon hearing Peter's words, the young man looked up, locking eyes with him

For a moment, Peter could only stare. The young man's eyes looked unlike anything he'd ever seen before: pitch black, like he had only pupils. Snapping himself out of a daze, Peter asked the man's name.

"Biff, Biff Harrington," he replied, his eyes returned to their usual brown color.

"Someone actually named you that?" Peter answered with cocked brows, pulling out his cell phone. "Look, I'm going to call some people who I think can help you. Why don't you have a seat right here," Peter told Biff, pointing to the large metal lab chair in the middle of the room.

Biff moved towards the uncomfortable looking chair in slow, jerky movements, but managed to get there without help.

"Who's the kid?" Federal agent Olivia Dunham asked when she walked into the lab followed by her assistant, junior agent, Astrid Farnsworth. Olivia wore a black suit coat over a white button up blouse with black slacks and dress shoes; Astrid, a red long-sleeve casual dress shirt with tan corduroy pants and shoes.

"Just in time, we may have a new case to look at," Peter replied. "He says his name's Biff Harrington. He came here asking for help. He thought might be 'some kind of freak'."

"Who names their kid Biff?"

"You want me to look him up?" Astrid asked. She knew her job too well. Junior agents _always_ get stuck running background checks, and looking up information. In most cases these days, her job also involved being Walter's lab assistant . . . and sometimes his babysitter.

"Yeah, while I see if I can get some more information from him," Olivia ordered the junior agent.

Stricken with uncontrollable bloodlust, Biff stood up from the lab chair, poised to lunge at Walter.

"PETER!" Walter screamed, his hands shaking in front of his face.

The air stiffened around everyone with Walter's fear. Peter and Olivia turned around to see what made Walter scream. Claws and fangs replaced the human teeth and nails Biff walked into the lab with and his eyes had turned pitch black again. He held a clawed hand out ready to strike.

Taking a heavy in breath, Olivia pulled out her gun from its holster, and fired off three shots. The bullets only made Biff take one or two steps back and he quickly healed what little damage Olivia's shots caused.

_Crap._ "Everyone get down," Olivia ordered. Her heart beat faster, as more adrenaline started pumping though her system. _This isn't going to be as easy as I thought. I need a plan B._

Peter got down against the wooden drawers underneath the central lab table. _Okay, regular bullets don't work, which means we need a plan B, _Peter thought, taking deep breaths, trying to claim his nerves. Even though his father hadn't spent much time with him growing up, he still didn't want anything to happen to him. He still loved him despite the issues he had.

_Wait, tranquilizer guns were placed in one of the drawers underneath all the lab tables at my request._ Peter turned around and slowly opened each drawer until he found the tranquilizer gun. He stood up and looked around, making sure no one stood between him and Biff. _Good, Walter and Astrid found a place to hide._ He fired off three shots, knocking Biff out and causing him to fall back into the lab chair. 

Walter, hands shaking, dared to take a peek at the scene. He saw Peter standing with the tranquilizer gun and Biff back in the lab chair. "Can I come out now?"

"Yes, you can come out now Walter. It's safe," Peter replied.

Astrid and Olivia cautiously stood up from their hiding places, behind more lab tables.

"What was that thing?" Olivia asked, gun still in hand.

"I don't know, but he did walk in here with pitch black eyes. Other than that he seemed pretty human. Until he grew fangs and claws. He's out for now," Peter answered.

Looking over at Biff, Olivia put her gun back in its holster. "Any idea what could have caused such a transformation?"

Astrid had since returned to her laptop to continue her back round check on Biff. "Guys, I think I may have found something," she replied and everyone gathered around her laptop. "According to this Biff is a Harvard biochemistry major who spent some time at a detox clinic in Mexico for a cocaine addiction. He was treated by a man named Hinrick Bonslauger. Now, here's what caught my eye: the name of the clinic, La Casa de Nueva Vida or "The House of New Life." This guy's treatments supposedly cure any and all addictions within a week."

"That's impossible," both Bishops exclaimed.

"Do you think it could have something to do with why or what Biff transformed into?" Olivia asked Walter.

"I suppose it's possible, but I would need Dr. what's-his-face's research. Strange as it may sound, he looks familiar, like I've seen him before even though I've never heard of him," Walter replied, excitement in his voice. He was like a kid in a candy store when it came to possible experiments.

"So, you think you could figure out what made Biff turned into Count Dracula?" Peter asked.

"Perhaps, but I need a blood sample and that doctor's help would be appreciated," Walter noted while he prepared a syringe to draw blood.

"And Astrid, could you tell me where Biff was living? I'd like to check the place out," Olivia ordered.

A dark haired man, appearing somewhere in his thirties, walked up to a house and knocked on the door. He wore a black vest over a grey-blue long sleeve dress shirt with black slacks and dress shoes. A young man, in his early twenties, answered the door after a few more knocks. "I'm looking for Biff, is he around?" the older man asked. "It's really important that I speak with him."

"Uh, he hasn't been home since a day ago that I'm aware of. I know he was near or maybe even in the biochemistry lab that exploded on Tuesday. They think he died along with everyone else, but nothing's been confirmed 'cuz they can't find his body. . . I didn't know him very well though; I was just his roommate. We weren't friends or anything," the young man answered, looking at the floor.

"Ok, thank you anyway," the man said. He turned around and started walking back towards campus. _This could be bad. If one of my sleeper vampires died again before the full transformation, a vampire could be walking about. One I have to find and quickly. Lucky for me, Biff isn't like the other brats I recently taught some manners to._

"Dr. Bonslauger?" a woman's voice called out from behind him.

The doctor turned around to face the blonde woman. She looked well dressed and important. "Yes?" he replied.

"I'm Olivia Duhnam with the FBI," she replied, showing her badge. "I've got some questions for you regarding a former patient of yours, Biff Harrington. He walked into one of our consultant's labs located in the basement of Harvard University's Kresge building yesterday. I was wondering if you could come with me and help us shed some light on his current condition?" she replied.

"Oh, that's why he wasn't home. Is he alright?" the doctor asked with a concerned tone. _Maybe I can hide my concern about blowing my cover, under concern for Biff._

"We're not sure. We were hoping you could help us in determining that."

Realizing it would be stupid of him not to go along with agent Duhnam, he agreed to help. _I'll just have to be careful_. "Alrighty then, but I need to call a colleague of mine who I believe may be able to help first," Bonslauger told Olivia. He pulled out a cell phone and keyed in Helen's number. "Helen, it's me. I need your help with one of my former patients. I was wondering if you could meet me in the basement of the Harvard University's Kresge building as soon as possible."

Olivia watched the doctor with interest, wondering exactly who this Helen person was and how she could possibly help. _Maybe she's his assistant or a colleague from earlier days?_ _Has Astrid come up with anymore background information on Bonslauger? I should ask to her to do a back ground check on Helen as well as when we get a last name._ _Maybe once Walter had actually met Dr. Bonslauger, he would remember where he'd seen him from._ She had an uneasy feeling in her gut. Bonslauger was hiding something; she just had to figure out what. "So, is she coming?"

"Yes, she'll be here later today," he responded following Olivia's lead.

"Alright, this is it. I have to warn you though, you're in for a few surprises," Olivia said. She led him up a set of stairs, and through the building's main entrance.

Dr. Bonslauger followed down another set of stairs and through the hallway to the basement entrance of Walter's lab. Dr. Bonslauger stood for a moment on the main platform just inside the lab entrance. A plethora of smells greeted his nose, the stale lab equipment, hay, and a faint sweet yet rotten smell he did not recognize. The sight of Walter's lab brought back old memories of his old lab in New York City, where he did preliminary work for building the Wardenclyffe Tower.

He took note of four additional platforms, one in each corner, with various lab equipment including beakers and microscopes. His blue eyes continued to survey the perimeter, noticing a freezer, file cabinets, and a table with three computers in the back. His eyes narrowed when he saw a cow on far left corner platform. How dare him! Bonslauger decided not to mention his distaste for animal testing now, but he would definitely have a word with Dr. Bishop later. He moved his focus to the center of the lab's main floor, where he saw what looked like a tank of some kind until his eyes rested on Biff. His former patient sat passed out in a chair in the middle of the room. "How long has he been out?"

"Oh, I see you managed to track down Doctor Frankenstein," Peter blurted out.

"Watch your language kid" Bonslauger retorted, giving Peter a pointed look.

"Oh, Doctor Bonslotter nice to meet you. My name's Walter Bishop and this is my son Peter . . . you look familiar," Walter said holding a hand out in greeting.

"First of all, it's Bon**slauger** and second of all would someone answer my question, how long has he been out?" he replied, annoyed.

"Not very long, why?"

"Good, but he won't stay that way, if those braces aren't made with Titanium webbing. He'll break through them quite easily," Bonslauger informed them. _And hopefully Helen will be here soon with the equipment required to run the devamper. _


	2. The Truth Can Be Painful

Author Notes: Finished (for now) Ch. 2. Please read & review

**Ch. 2. The Truth Can Be Painful**

"How did you get that?" Nikola sneered.

"Remember the government took all your lab equipment and notes into custody shortly after you reportedly died in 1943?" Peter answered

"Thanks for the reminder, kid. I suppose I could ask for them back, not that it matters though because I could just recalculate and rebuild everything from memory. I believe this ability is called eidetic memory," Nikola spat back.

"Considering the times and what you were working on, I don't blame the government," Olivia added.

Nikola was about to respond with his usual "I thought my _**Peace Ray**_ would end all war" speech when he got hit by a wave of nausea. "Damn it! Not now!" he hissed through clenched teeth, trying to fight off a daymare he did NOT want to re-live. Its force became too strong and the pop-gun sitting in front of him didn't help either. Nikola groaned, falling into another horrifying vision of his late brother, Dane's death.

_On a beautiful autumn afternoon in Smiljan, Croatia, seven-year-old Nikola Tesla enjoyed playing on his family's vast farm lands. He ran over its hills and through its forests with his newly acquired pop gun. A curious little boy; he always wondered how things worked and how he could make them better. Little "Niko" marveled in fascination at how such an apparatus could compress enough air to pop the cork out the end._

"_Hey, Niko, I see you're playing with that new pop-gun I made you," Nikola's eldest sibling and only brother, Dane asked, riding up to Nikola on the family horse._

"_Yeah! Thanks! Isn't it amazing how this thing can compress enough air to shoot a cork out the end?" Niko told his brother. Unfortunately, in his eagerness to tell his brother, the young genius hadn't noticed his finger came to rest on the trigger. Before he knew it, the pop gun went off._

_The family horse reared up, throwing Dane into the air before the older boy had a chance to respond. Dane landed on the ground several feet away._

_Nikola watched, for a moment, frozen in horror, while his beloved brother was launched from the Arabian's back. Nikola unfroze once he realized Dane lay still. He ran over to where his brother lay. "Please don't die on me! Please Dane! I didn't mean to scare him! I didn't!"_

"_I know," Dane tried to reassure his baby brother, after being brought out of a hazy consciousness by Nikola's ranting._

"_This is all my fault! If I had known my finger was on the trigger and, and." _

"_No, Niko, It's not your fault. You couldn't have known this would happen."_

"_My poor boy," Djuka Tesla wept when she found the two boys. She knelt down where her eldest and favorite son lay. "What happened here?" their mother demanded._

"_I, I," Nikola croaked out through the tears._

"_He, didn't, mean to, mother," Dane told her before returning to hazy consciousness again._

"_Leave us!" Djuka yelled at her other son, seeing her husband, Miltuntin, arrive at the scene._

"_We need to get Dane to the house," Miltuntin said_

_Nikola walked away in silence, his head heavy. He made his way to the pigeon coop. For some reason, felt pigeons understood him better and appreciated him more. There were times when he questioned whether even Dane really understood him. Something about being with the pigeons just made him feel welcome._

_Even though he and Dane both shared the ability to visualize things so vividly they looked like they actually existed, Dane had always been the family favorite. Anything Nikola did always got compared to whatever Dane did. And now, Nikola could be blamed for Dane's injuries! Oh how he wished he could change that. But no matter how much he wished it, he knew it wasn't possible._

_A pair of pigeons, sensing Nikola's grief, flew over to the bench where the lad was sitting and landed on a near-by perch. One of them, a small female, decided to fly closer and brushed herself against Nikola's shoulder in an effort to get the poor boy's attention. Surprisingly it worked, as Nikola turned to look at her._

"_I, I, accidentally made Dane fall off the horse and now he's really badly hurt!" young Niko confessed to his feathered friend, his small slim hand wiping the tears from his face._

_The pigeon drew closer and tried to wrap her wing around the slim boy's frame. She may not have understood any of the words Nikola had just spoken or their full implications, but she did understand the boy was in some kind of pain._

* * * *

Nikola grabbed the pop-gun lying on the table in front of them. He looked at it precariously, studying how it worked.

After careful observation, Olivia noticed Nikola's eyes were glossed over and distant. He appeared to have gone to another place inside his own mind.

The temporary silence broke when Nikola cried out after dropping the pop-gun.

"_Please don't die on me . . . I didn't mean to scare him . . ."_

"Should've seen this coming," Peter said, shaking his head.

"Seen what coming?" Olivia asked her co-worker, still confused by Tesla's actions.

"The pop-gun sitting there reportedly caused Tesla's older brother, Dane's death. He fell off the family horse after Tesla spooked it, by accidentally shot the gun off. The family never recovered from the incident and it led to multiple issues for Tesla later in life, including having nightmares or visions of the incident throughout his life," Peter informed Olivia.

"Wow, I knew the pop-gun held significance, but didn't realize it would have elicited this kind of response," Olivia replied, now feeling somewhat guilty for evoking such a terrible memory.

"_. . . all my fault . . ."_ Nikola murmured, slumping even further into the chair.

"Ok, we need to try and shake him out of this," Olivia ordered.

"I'm not so sure we can, but I'll get Walter's opinion on this."

"Oh and one more thing, Tesla's brother's death, _**was**_ an accident right?"

"According to official reports, yes."  
Olivia walked around to the other side of the table. She gently place a hand on Nikola's shoulder and lightly shook him. "Nikola?"

"_I, I, accidentally made Dane fall off the horse and now he's really badly hurt!"_

"Nikola?" She asked, a little louder this time.

"Agent Duhnam?" Nikola exclaimed, coming out of his daymare, face red with embarrassment.

"I'm sorry. I know I put you in an awkward situation. I didn't know the pop gun would invoke such a terrible memory. That still doesn't excuse what you did to Biff though. I am however, willing to cut you a deal if you're willing to be Dr. Bishop's lab rat," Olivia replied and walked out of the office. She hoped to give Nikola some private time to think about her offer.

* * *

Peter walked out of the office and down the platform steps to the main floor of his father's lab. His instincts told him Olivia couldn't wake Tesla up from his daymare, but he wanted Walter's opinion anyway. It felt good to actually hold a conversation with him these days since Walter wasn't there for much of his childhood. "Walter. I want your opinion on something."

"On what? I was about to ask Dr. Magnus how she knew Dr. Bonslauger."

"Well, Dr. Bonslauger is actually Nikola Tesla," Peter informed his father. "How do you know Tesla anyways?"

Helen took a deep breath. She felt bad for having helped bow her old friend's cover since she helped him escape from the FBI once before by faking his death. Blasted! I should have been more careful! "We were old friends at Oxford."

"Since when did Tesla go to Oxford? You don't look much over 35. The logistics don't match!" Walter replied. Something seemed fishy about D. Magnus' reply, but Walter couldn't quite place his finger on it. That and if Dr. Bonslauger was really Nikola Tesla as Peter had said, then how did he manage to fake his death and how did he stay so young? Could it have something to do with the vampire he turned Biff into?

"Walter's got a point. Something isn't right here. All of Tesla's biographies and even his autobiography never mention him attending Oxford. Plus, you can't be older then what 45. So, how'd you meet him after his supposed death and at Oxford when all records say he was in New York City?" Peter added.

Helen felt a knot in her throat start to form. This wasn't going well. Even though she disagreed with Nikola experimenting on innocent children with his own blood, she didn't think he deserved to spend the rest of his now mortal life in jail. Not after she had convinced him to "de-vamp" all his patients and he probably wasn't even finished. How could she help him get out of this mess and how much information was she willing to give the FBI? "Had it occurred to either of you that Nikola didn't want anyone to know he went to Oxford instead of Prague?"

"Why?"

Helen sighed. She really did not want to reveal much about their past or her line of work. However, at the moment it looked like she didn't have much of a choice and it would be better if she were to provide some information now, rather than have the FBI find out later. "If I reveal this, you must promise to keep it a secret," she told them, speaking in hushed tones.

"That bad? Okay," Peter replied, while Walter nodded in agreement. Both of them understood the need to keep certain things a secret.

"Because of what happened. Nikola and I are not as young as we appear to be. Back at Oxford, we were part of a small group of students. Students devoted to expanding the boundaries of science beyond the known. There are creatures in this world which most view as myth or legend. They are not. I was auditing medical classes at the time, as women couldn't enroll. That is how this group was formed. I was able to create a serum from pure vampire blood which each of us injected. This serum activated latent abnormal DNA within each of us. As a result, Nikola learned he was half vampire and I learned that I would age very slowly. Around that time, I started an international network of private research facilities designed to study and help protect these creatures."

"So, let me get this straight. After you became a freak, you opened research facilities to help protect them?" Peter asked in disbelief.

"I prefer to call them abnormals, but yes."

Lights went on in Walter's head, when he realized that the serum Helen described worked in a similar fashion to the Cortexiphan he and William Bell secretly experimented on children with in the 70's. He also realized what Tesla did to Biff. "He injected his own blood into him. His earlier statements now make more sense," he blurted out.

"Huh?" Peter asked.

"Yes. While, I don't agree with Nikola's experiments, he did create a synthetic serum from his own blood. He intended it to slowly release the vampire gene over 30 years time, similar to how cold medicine works. What he didn't account for, was death. If a patient of his dies before then, the vampire gene automatically activates," Helen replied.

"So that's why Biff said he must have been a freak."

"Poor kid must have been scared," Helen replied. "Which reminds me, we need a cover story for him."

"I read there was an explosion in the biochemistry lab on Tuesday. That's probably what killed him. I can have Astrid work on finding him a new identity," Peter replied.

"I presume we're talking about Biff?" Olivia asked, announcing her presence.

"Oh, Olivia yes." Walter replied.

"That's a good idea."

"On it."

"I'd like to speak with Nikola if you don't mind?" Helen asked.

"I don't see why not. He's still in the office," Olivia replied not minding the request. With both Helen and Nikola in the office, it would give her time to catch up.


End file.
